THEATRE
Yea, verily
KENNETH HURREN
To the Theatre Royal, Stratford-atte-Bowe, in Mind much framed by dark Suspicion, there to contemplate a stage Piece yclept The Projector, advis'd to the Prints as a rediscover'd Work by one William Rufus Chetwood that had been formerly produc'd but once only in circumstance of monstrous Dismay on the night of Friday 13 April 1733, it then having the title The Mock Mason.
The Intelligence vouchsaf'd curious Scribes, whose reference Tomes paid skimpy note to Chetwood (sometime Prompter at the Drury Lane Theatre) and said naught of the Play, was that Master John Wells had brought the Piece to light, he chancing upon it in some eighteenth-century Book and repairing at once for discourse with Mistress Littlewood, the both excellently pleas'd to discover its appositeness to the collapse of the great Dwelling-house at Ronan Point but two years past.
Here was a strange Tale, to be sure, for good Master Wells, late of these columns, a young Jackanapes of infinite jest enjoying ethereal renown for his Drolleries and Carri- witchets, had not been hitherto noted by his Intimates and Commensals to be a Browser among literary Antiquities. Thus were Doubts rais'd in the Spas and Tap- rooms as to whether Master Wells, had such a Book fallen into his Hands, would have so far persever'd in the perusal of it to discover that, in a late Scene of a coarse Tarradiddle by the uncelebrated Chetwood, a Building fell down.
Your present Correspondent fell in with the Sceptics on reading the Report circu- lated by the Theatre concerning the Play's 1733 performance, disrupted by 'hired Ruf- fians' at the behest of some notorious Jerry- builder of the day and eventually brought to a standstill when lighted Candles were purloin'd from their Sconces and hurl'd upon the stage at Goodman's Fields.
Such an extraordinary Occasion would not, I am persuaded, have scap'd the Re-
searches of Master John Trewin who, some few years past, amassed the Minutiae of such Disasters in his Treatise, 'The Night Has Been Unruly.' Further, the entire Dis. patch emanating from Stratford-atte-Bowe had the Complexion and Conceits of the satirical Scribblings of Master Wells diffused through all, and in the programme Note his Pen outruns his Discretion. There is reference to the ancient Book's recording that the Work had been 'retitled and re+ vis'd by a later Hand.' It is then observ'd that 'the revisions to the text, which do not appear to be extensive, are thought to be by either Roome or Cibber,' any such scholarly Speculation of necessity requiring sight of both original and revis'd Versions, whereas but one is claim'd to exist and that one not produc'd in evidence. Dissenters must be further provok'd by the careless Reference to the Poet laureate Colley Cibber, a Gentleman not given to doctoring other Worthies' Plays for Sport but only for Profit in the Playhouse.
In the Play itself the Pretence is ain't. don'd and the Hoax betray'd, for 'tis a skimble-skamble Thing patently design'd to Mistress Littlewood's habitual Require+ ments, and 'tis beyond Credulity that any quondam Company existed so similarly careless of Form and Style, constraining all to wild Improvisation and Scortatory and divers unseemly Disports, the which The Projector is pattern'd to allow. Master Wells is most attentive to the proper Ver+ nacular, but his Piece is not plausible as Pastiche, and as Parody is baked only half its time. Only in the Respect that it has no Wit, and in its Musick 'new arranged from the original Sources' by Master Carl Davis) no Felicity, is it true in Resemblance to a Work ignored these two Centuries. Pox on't.
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